If you want to be loved go to Italy

Art Cities - Neil Moore

in conjunction with the Members Society of the National Gallery of Victoria with Neil Moore in 2010

One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things. (Henry Miller)

One of the many delights of living in Umbria has been the discovery that in almost every church in even the smallest and most hidden away of hilltowns there will be fascinating and often beautiful images still there on the walls, reminders of the rich history that this region on the road between Florence and Rome has been witness to since the Etruscans flourished here two and a half thousand years ago. Fresco painting -that is the application of colours to freshly laid plaster - is the most traditional of all the forms of painting of the civilizations of the ancient Mediterranean, but here it seems particularly at home, emerging almost naturally, as do the towns themselves, from the landscape that surrounds us.

GIOTTO-ASCERTAINING THE STIGMATA

Amongst all this wealth of art there are a number of cycles that are a must to see even for those with only a passing interest in art. First on this list, and also chronologically - we're in the year 1299 with the crusades in full swing - is the majestic life of Saint Francis of Assisi in the Basilica dedicated to him in that Umbrian town. Usually described as the first major work of the great Florentine painter Giotto, recent analysis makes a strong case for it being instead the work of an older and little known Roman master called Pietro Cavallini unjustly deprived of the credit for this extraordinarily beautiful and inflential cycle. The young Giotto was there in 1302 and almost certainly did work in the lower Basilica, where there is also work by Cimabue, Lorenzetti and Simone Martini.

This Life of Saint Francis established a canon for the treatment of the subject which can clearly be seen at nearby Montefalco where Benozzo Gozzoli painted another "Life" in the apse of the Saint's church there. Gozzoli was a pupil of another great florentine Fra Angelico, and prior to his 1452 sojourn at Montefalco had been at work with his master at Orvieto. Comparing this work with the one in Assisi one can clearly see the Renaissance taking form.

Lippi, Annunciation, Spoleto

Just a few years later and another painter-friar, as worldly as Fra Angelico was holy, painted the marvellous Life of the Virgin in the apse of Spoleto's Duomo. Between 1467 and 1469 Fra Filippo Lippi worked there on what turned out to be his last painting. Ironically he included in the central scene a self portrait where he is making with his hand the classic Italian gesture of the "corna" which wards off bad luck. One account of his death has him falling off the scaffolding, another that he was given poisoned figs. His tomb is nearby, and his young son and prodigy Filippino, whose portrait is just below his father's, finished off the painting.

The years just before and after 1500 were a magic and never to be repeated moment in painting and there are three masterpieces from that period in my part of Umbria. The middle Renaissance is now at its peak whereeffortless draughtsmanship, beautiful colours and a seemless fusion of christian and pagan subjects all come together in a style of richness and apparent simplicity. The paradigm breaking effects of Leonardo and above all Michelangelo were not yet in evidence when Perugino helped by his fatefully brilliant pupil Raphael decorated the modestly scaled Collegio del Cambio, or money changing room, in Perugia's main street next to the Palazzo Communale. A fascinating work which gives pictorial form to the Renaissance obsession with integrating christian and pagan philosophy, one can already start to see the extraordinary compositional talents of the pupil as he breaks away from the relatively static effects of his master.

Raphael, Collegio del Cambio, Perugia

Another of Perugino's pupils, Pinturicchio,was active in that same couple of years and has left us the richly decorated Baglioni chapel in Spello, a very pretty town in sight of both Assisi and Montefalco. Here we have an annunciation, a nativity and the young Jesus debating theology done with rare sumptuousness and astounding colour.

Pinturicchio, Annunication, Spello

Another of Perugino's pupils, Pinturicchio,was active in that same couple of years and has left us the richly decorated Baglioni chapel in Spello, a very pretty town in sight of both Assisi and Montefalco. Here we have an annunciation, a nativity and the young Jesus debating theology done with rare sumptuousness and astounding colour.

Pinturicchio, Spello

And finally we come to Orvieto, the great Etruscan stronghold whose duomo was built to hold the bloodstained altar cloth from nearby Bolsena which was the basis for the feast of Corpus Domini. One of the really great cathedrals of Europe, the chapel of San Brizio was added to it in the early 1400's, and its decoration was begun by Fra Angelico in 1447. It was not until 1499, however, that the city fathers were able to contract an artist to finish it - Perugino, famous for his penny pinching, apparently asked too high a fee - and the choice fell on Luca Signorelli from Cortona.

Signorelli, Resurrection, Orvieto

His Apocalypse cycle, painted in a record two seasons is his masterpiece and a work whose total focus on the human body sums up the well known Renaissance desire to make man the physical center of the universe. This work with its masses of writhing bodies must have been looked at with great interest by the young Michelangelo, who would have seen in it a vindication of his own single minded dedication to the human body.